The people mover

I’ve written here before about my image of life as a sort of people mover. Each of us has a spot in the stream of humanity, and this conveyance moves us all along from birth to death, while others move along behind us and—at least for now—in front of us.

I’ve talked about this image in terms of the “rightness” of our inevitable demise: the time comes when it’s our turn to rotate off the end of the people mover so that others can fill in the spaces where we’ve been. It also helps me to get a grip on my response to the range of folks I see in the “real world.” I’m sometimes honestly stunned and perplexed by the fact that there are people of all ages in the world—and they just keep coming, filling up places where I used to be. Newborn infants, wobbly toddlers, giggling preschoolers, and boisterous grade schoolers keep rolling into the spaces at the very back of the people mover. Ahead of them, painfully self-conscious adolescents and young adults move toward the spaces designated for adults. I see these near-adults and think (stunned again), “You’re just starting!” Between those youthful beginnings and me now stand generations of adults—some of my peers are great-grandparents, which I guess means there are at least three generations behind me, two of them adult-like.   

This vision of the human family on a people mover has its wonderful side and its troubling side, and I’ve been reminded of both in recent days. I'm most often aware of the upbeat part. Generally, I feel quite fine about this state of affairs—good even. The whole thing has a certain symmetry and some inherent fairness. And it frequently provides these moments of dazzling hope. For instance, my partner and I just returned from the annual conference of the American Psychological Association. It was in Hawaii, a beautiful corner of the Earth, which provides an opportunity to insert a few pictures to thank you for visiting my blog.

 

This conference, like most, has two appeals for me: the conference content and the chance to hang out with friends we rarely see. Both were happy reminders of the people mover.

First, the content part: At this conference, like at many recently, we encountered truly exciting work being done by folks a couple of generations back on the people mover. LGBT psychology is still wet behind its academic ears, so it's very exciting to see young folks, relatively new to this professional life, doing truly creative and sophisticated work in this area. The folks behind us in this particular lane of the people mover are stepping in, filling up the space my generation is leaving open, and doing so with grace and aplomb. I can turn around and see them there, enthusiastic, thoughtful, confident that they have something new and important to say. And they clearly do.

The social events conveyed the same message. The young people who hung around the munchies table at the social and lined up at the buffet at the group dinner, eagerly talking about research, politics, and social change between sips of wine and bites of fish tacos—these folks, too, are in our rearview mirror on the people mover. The future is coming along behind us, and it looks mighty good. 

On the other hand, the people mover sometimes troubles me with its insistent movement of some folks into and others out of the mainstream, that section of the contraption that gets all the attention, the generation that is seen, heard, and honored. Which is to say, I’m sometimes bothered by the sense that the crowd behind me is getting what seems like a disproportionately large share of the attention these days. The realization that my cohort is being displaced isn’t always a happy one.

I understand that this shift is reasonable, given that the folks behind me are now the heart of this humming, stumbling society. Clearly, part of my discomfort with this is pure narcissism: What about me? Be that as it may, I now understand the impulse of old people—an impulse I hated when I was younger—to reclaim our more visible, central, “important” years by saying things like “When I was your age …” or “I used to do that, too.” It doesn’t seem so long ago that we were in the prime years, when we were the demographic the advertisers wanted to please, we were the ones magazines and TV shows and movies coddled and portrayed, we were doing all the exciting, adventurous things. “When I was your age …”

So, this less-than-delighted perspective on the people mover was brought home for me by a recent New York Times article (which was actually a blog). This article / blog post was really good; it was about doctors’ reluctance to allow patients to die, even when they choose to end treatment, and even (this part is amazing!) when they are in hospice care. As some of you know, I’m interested in end-of-life issues, so this article caught my attention.

After I read it, I went to the blog site, called “The New Old Age,” to see what else it held. I found it to be rich in resources on aging, with lots of tools and links to organizations around the web. But what caught my attention was the paragraph introducing the blog. I quickly got that the blog is not for  aging folks. It’s about us. The intended audience is the adult children of folks who are getting old. It’s for people behind us on the people mover; it’s about people (like me and my peers) who are approaching our time to be rotating off the end. Here’s what I read:

Thanks to the marvels of medical science, our parents are living longer than ever before. Adults over age 80 are the fastest growing segment of the population; most will spend years dependent on others for the most basic needs. That burden falls to their baby boomer children. In The New Old Age, Paula Span and other contributors explore this unprecedented intergenerational challenge. 

Now, I think it’s grand that people are thinking about this stuff. If I were trying to tend to my aging (and, presumably, ailing … among the “most [who] will spend years dependent on others for the most basic needs”) parents, I would be ever so happy to find this resource. I’m very clear that the pervasive fantasy that living longer inevitably means living healthily until our last day is just that: a fantasy. I understand that longer life for many will mean a period of limited ability, heightened dependence. And it’s clear that having family members and friends who can be present and supportive for that is important. So I’m not questioning the value of such information. If I were in that situation, I would likely welcome this blog—including its introductory paragraph.  

But I’m not. Tending my parents, that is. I may not even be happy about finding this blog, although I’ll need to look at it more before I decide that. I know for sure I’m not happy about the feeling evoked by that introductory paragraph, the sense of being the “other”—even being described using the dreaded word “burden.”

This is the less-than-joyful side of the people mover. Gazing in the rearview mirror can bring great joy at the swarm of good people coming along behind us. And it can bring great distress at the easy displacement we experience as the end of the ride approaches. As many have said before and better, it’s not the end that troubles me here; it’s the process of getting there. In this case, it’s the feeling this paragraph arouses of no longer mattering, except as a task for someone to undertake. It’s the slide from being the center of the herd, its beating heart, to being consigned to its edge, its “burden.”

The actual experience of those who are aging is totally lost in this paragraph, buried beneath the struggle their younger caretakers face, the "burden" they must bear. Yet aren't there two feeling people here, two inner lives. Surely there’s a way to keep both stretches of the long river of humanity in focus. Surely it’s possible for both to see themselves (and be seen by each other) as agents in their lives—rather than one being the agent of all that happens and the other the object of it all.

Perhaps it’s just that each generation sees itself as central. The NYT blogger sees her generation as the agents, her parents’ as the objects. I see it otherwise.

Seems like we should talk.